The party’s over! The decorations have come down! Most
tellingly the crib figures have been
removed from the church, put into storage. Are Mary, Joseph, shepherds, wise
men and even baby Jesus. Now being out of sight were they to be henceforth banished from our
minds? We must not allow this to happen!
In the course of this Liturgical Year from Advent to Advent the
Church will celebrate the history, the
mystery, of our salvation as accomplished through the life, death, resurrection
and glorification of Jesus. As our focus
shifts according to liturgical feasts
and seasons we carry everything we believe about Jesus ….everything we expect
of Jesus, everything He expects of us. And how do we carry this package? Not as
a burdensome load on our backs, but as a treasure clutched to our hearts.
At Christmas we gave pride of
place to the birth of the child Jesus. Then, on New Year’s Day the Church kept
the Solemnity of Mary the Mother of God. Honour the new-born, Jesus, then honour
His mother - Mary! She is very much worthy of our love and
devotion. What an intimate relationship
she had with God! She gave Him all the
baby-care He needed …her Mary’s Son being the Son of God. She who had presented
her child to the world at His birth presented Him to the world with generous,
courageous love at that moment when Jesus gasped His last breath on the
Cross. Our wonder at the beauty of the
Bethlehem Manger should not to be separated from our horrified awe at what took
place at the Calvary!
For almost
half a century Popes have seen
the need to commence each year
with a WORLD DAY OF PEACE – with each year
having its own theme - throwing its own emphasis
on the purpose of the Son of God
becoming man, one of us. Surely it was
to redeem, to bring peace,
to the family of mankind that had lost its way and was relentlessly
pursuing a path of
self-destruction.
Pope Francis, In
choosing for his theme, ‘SLAVES NO MORE, BUT BROTHERS AND SISTERS’
intended to startle us. He knew that many people think that slavery is a thing of the past. ‘In
fact,’ he said, ‘this social plague remains all too real in today’s
world.’ In a very general sense the Pope
sees as enslavement the treatment of anyone as an object of contempt, a thing
to be possessed, used and abused according to the convenience and inclination
of another. Wherever there is inflicted misery that makes life a
wretched experience there is a form of
enslavement.
Central to the Pope’s
thinking is the fact that every single one of us originates from God; each
of us is stamped with the dignity of being made in the image
and likeness of God. At a very basic level each of us is a person of dignity deserving
to be to be respected. Indeed, the Pope sees every form of violence
as a kind of replay of the outrageous
way Cain treated his brother Abel. Yet more profoundly he sees it as a replay
of the violence inflicted on the one who became the Brother of all Mankind –
Brother Jesus, Son of God, Son of Man.
The Pope expects us to be
soul-searching about the way we relate to others. He expects us to be
pro-active in alerting our society to
whatever inhumanity is being perpetrated or tolerated. This Message of
Peace, this rejection of every form of
Enslavement must be lived
and promoted by all of us throughout this year, and every year. The impetus and inspiration that were drawn
from our celebration on the first day of this year must not be
shelved out of the way - as have been the decorations and crib figures.
It is a matter of
urgency that throughout the year all of
us live with the necessary coupling of
the hands-on spirituality of the
World Day of Peace and the radical transforming
spirituality derived Mary being
the Mother of God whose Son is the Saviour of this GOD- LOVED… NEVER-GOD-FORESAKEN WORLD!
Peter Clarke, OP
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